Innovation As The Key To Business Success And Growth

By M. Isi Eromosele

Innovation is often about small, incremental changes to products, services and processes. It should involve all managers in every department from Finance to Customer Services. It should be planned and managed as a core business process covering all parts of a business. It needs to be integrated into the business at both strategic and operational levels.

Innovation + Strategy Planning

As with all other core business processes innovation needs to be linked to strategy and the business planning process.  Innovation separate from business strategy runs the risk of diverting key resources and damaging the focus of an organization. This must be avoided at all costs.  Innovation activities must be driven by strategy and current business imperatives.

The extent and type of innovation should be determined by current business performance and future expectations and by an organization’s tolerance to risk.

How far innovation is integrated with a business’ strategy is also dependant upon a business’ appetite for risk and its risk profile. Differing types of innovation strategies and projects have different risks. A balanced portfolio of innovation projects should be adopted when assessing the risk factors involved and the numbers of ideas or innovations being managed at any one time.

Creating An Innovation Pipeline

Once innovation, as a concept, has been accepted at a strategic level, the practical implications of having an integrated innovation process or system have to be addressed. An effective starting point is to understand from where innovations originate and how they can be collated and screened.

Innovations and ideas can come from any part of an organization. It is not the preserve of the R&D department or Marketing. Nor is it merely limited to an employee or customer ‘suggestion scheme’.

A successful innovation culture embraces all aspects of a business and should be managed as effectively and efficiently as any other core business process. To that end, successful innovation companies operate an ‘Innovation Hub’ where all ideas and innovations are collated and coordinated.

Creative processes and analysis can be used to stimulate new ideas in four basic areas:

• Business Innovation  - new business or supply chain models, for example
• Product or Service Innovation - new or modified products or ways of providing a service
• Market Innovation - opening a new market or creating a new customer base
• Process Innovation - improving or changing internal processes

Ideas should be effectively screened and bad ideas killed off quickly but sympathetically. The number and type of ideas will be determined by the performance gap and available resources.

Many organizations find that an effective screening or filtering process prevents innovation overload, whereby a company is almost paralyzed by the sheer volume of innovations and ideas generated from the multiplicity of sources previously mentioned. If new ideas and innovations are to make a difference, they must satisfy five basic criteria, Value, Suitable, Acceptable, Feasible and Enduring.

Value

Does the idea deliver tangible benefits to the organization? This question helps eliminate those ideas and innovations that are good in principle but add little or no value to the bottom line, now or in the future.

Suitable

Is it consistent with strategy and the current situation? This helps eliminate those ideas that are potential distractions and move the business needlessly away from its core business focus.

Acceptable

Will all stakeholders support it? It is crucial that proponents of an idea or innovation

spend time and effort on selling the idea internally and gauging the level of support  for it.

Feasible

Are there sufficient resources and time? Can the innovation be managed within existing budgets or will additional funding be required?  Do new skills need to be acquired to implement this idea effectively?

Enduring

Will the idea deliver value in both the long and short term? If a new idea or innovation is to be truly strategic will it survive the rigors of time? Is the long term gain worth the short term pain of bringing a new idea to market? 

Implementing Innovation

Innovation should be built into business routines at three distinct levels - at the Annual Business Planning (ABP) process, through structured ‘themed’ Quarterly Innovation Workshops (QIWs) and ad hoc day to day activities. 

Some of the routines are proactive by nature, a conscious focus on bringing ideas and concepts forward into the innovation process, such as ABP meetings and QIWs. Some routines are passive or reactive, such as creating a culture of innovation where day to day activities and management seek to enable innovations to flourish.

In all cases, ideas and innovations should be driven by market, customer or competitor insights and progress reviewed on a monthly basis.  A robust project management process is often a prerequisite for effective implementation and communication.

If there are no boundaries and structure to the innovation process, then staff confidence is often affected. If there is no method, then the chance of success is reduced. Organizations that truly invest in their people and understand the value of their ideas ensure that facilities, equipment, time and resources are organized to help foster ideas and innovations.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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